Package spotlights maternal health in 5 countries
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The team at the Pulitzer Gateway (a site from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting) have turned their focus toward worldwide maternal health and produced “Dying for Life,” a package that spans five countries and three continents. Here are its components:
Nigeria
A reminder that despite a slight improvement in global maternal health, the situation in some countries is still deteriorating. The end result will be “Edge of Joy,” a documentary set to be released this summer.
Ethiopia
Hanna Ingber Win visits maternal health programs administered by the UN Population Fund. She filed five dispatches.
Mexico
Samuel Loewenberg investigated the social, medical, economic and political factors behind the “health crises” affecting two impoverished Mexican states. He filed three stories.
Guinea-Bissau
Marco Vernaschi photographed the everyday realities of a region with critical health care access and delivery issues.
India
Hanna Ingber Win investigated maternal health disparities and efforts to improve the situation in India, particularly the province of Assam. She posted five stories.
Wisconsin’s low Medicaid fees create dental woes
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The Wisconsin State Journal’s David Wahlberg reports that access to adequate dental care is a major public health issue throughout the state, especially among Medicaid recipients. Federally funded clinics are starting to fill the gaps, but there is still quite a bit of catching up to do. Waiting lists are long, and it’s the nature of remedial dental care that getting each mouth back on track is a long and involved process.
Photo by dbgg1979 via FlickrDentists told Wahlberg that they are reluctant to serve Medicaid recipients because the state’s reimbursement rates are too low. According to HHS, Wahlberg writes, “Just 23 percent of the state’s enrollees got dental care in 2008. Only Delaware, Florida and Kentucky fared worse.”
Rural areas have only about half as many dentists per person as urban areas do, making the search for dental care even harder in small towns.
That, combined with low fluoride levels in many rural drinking water supplies, means more tooth loss and untreated decay for many rural residents, state health officials say.
“Of all of the holes (in health care), dental care is the biggest and the deepest,” said Greg Nycz, executive director of the Family Health Center of Marshfield, which serves much of rural, northern Wisconsin.
The article is the latest in Wahlberg’s yearlong look at rural health care. Wahlberg will be moderating a panel about oral health for rural residents at next week’s Rural Health Journalism Workshop in Kansas City.
Lead poisoning hurts Detroit kids’ academics
Detroit Free Press reporters Tina Lam and Kristi Tanner-White report that data compiled by the city shows that “More than half of the students tested in Detroit Public Schools have a history of lead poisoning, which affects brain function for life.” Lead poisoning is bad news, but it gets much worse:
Now, a landmark study by the city health department and Detroit Public Schools of lead data and test scores shows that the higher the lead level, the worse a student’s scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program exam, or MEAP.
Overall, 58% of roughly 39,000 DPS students tested – 22,755 children – had a history of lead poisoning, according to the study.
Perhaps more startling: Of the 39,199 students tested as young children, only 23 had no lead in their bodies.
There are confounding factors, of course, but this chart shows the correlation between lead exposure and weaker academic skills. It’s yet another blow for a school district whose students were already some of the worst performing in the nation.
The story ran with an excellent graphic on lead poisoning levels throughout the city over time, as well as a school-by-school database of lead poisoning statistics.
CDC report includes state data on infections
Filed under: Government, Hospitals, Member news, Studies
The CDC has released a report detailing health-care-associated infections, specifically central line-associated bloodstream infections.
This is the first such report to include any state-specific information, according to the CDC, though it only includes states that require reporting of CLABSIs to the National Healthcare Safety Network. The CDC expects this to serve as a baseline report to help guide prevention plans and activities.
Peter Pronovost, M.D., who spoke about patient safety and health care associated infections at Health Journalism 2010, was among the participants in a telebriefing about the report. A transcript of that briefing should be available later today.
GAO evaluates youth concussion databases
Filed under: Health data, Hot Health Headline, Public records, Studies
In a recent report, the Goverment Accountability Office reviewed national efforts to track concussions in youth sports (highlights). The report evaluates local and national laws designed to keep young athletes safe, but the most immediately useful component may be the identification and evaluation of three incomplete national databases now being maintained.
High School Reporting Information Online database
Provides national estimates of occurrence of concussion, it covers only 20 sports for high schools with certified athletic trainers. It may underestimate occurrence because some athletes may be reluctant to report symptoms of a possible concussion to avoid being removed from a game.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System
Provides national estimates only on concussions treated in an emergency room.
The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research database
Provides information only on cases of concussion with serious complications and cannot provide national estimates of the occurrence of all concussions.
Related
- Last week, the House of Representatives’ Education and Labor Committee held a hearing to examine the prevalence of concussions among high school athletes and how the injury can impact academic achievement.
- Previous coverage of concussions
Center names 15 Vietnam Reporting Fellows
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The Renaissance Journalism Center, at San Francisco State University, has selected a mix of “mainstream, ethnic and student journalists” for its Vietnam Reporting Project Fellowships.
The 15 fellows will be expected to “investigate the toxic legacy left in Vietnam by the use of the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.”
Prominent names include AP photographer Nick Ut, Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz and Victor Merina, a former investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times. The full list of winners can be found here.
The center hopes the journalists will put a human face on the health and environmental issues that might not otherwise be covered by cash-strapped publications.
How bad docs keep clean records
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Jeremy Kohler and Blythe Bernhard used the example of one litigious St. Louis psychiatrist to demonstrate how doctors can work the system to keep their records clean and professional prospects bright despite work histories that are sometimes anything but. The strong anecdote provides engaging context for a well-analyzed report on the reporting of physician errors under the current system.
Critics say hospitals are underreporting and that puts patients in harm’s way. As long ago as 1996, a government agency concluded that the number of hospital reports was “unreasonably low.” It has gotten even lower. In 2008, the number of reports was three-fourths of the 1996 total, according to the newspaper’s analysis.
CDC used flawed data on lead in drinking water
Filed under: Hot Health Headline, Member news, Public health, Studies
The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig reports that an investigation by the House Committee on Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight has confirmed what The Washington Post first reported last year, namely:
Photo by blandm via Flickr“The nation’s premier public health agency knowingly used flawed data to claim that high lead levels in the District’s drinking water did not pose a health risk to the public… And, investigators determined, the agency has not publicized more thorough internal research showing that the problem harmed children across the city and continues to endanger thousands of D.C. residents.” Those who need a refresher on the issue can refer to the Post’s timeline and story archive.
The larger issue here is that the committee and the Government Accountability Office are looking into how the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry evaluates public health issues.
Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC) had some harsh words for the department:
“We need more honesty and transparency and less attitude from these offices. When you work at a public health science agency and the words most frequently used are ‘haphazard,’ ‘hit-or-miss’ and ‘ad hoc,’ maybe you should pause and reflect.”
Feds want to fight food deserts
Filed under: Health policy, Hot Health Headline, Public health
The Detroit News‘ Nathan Hurst reports from D.C. on the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, proposed legislation that would commit between $400 million and $1 billion dollars to “building and improving stores where access to fresh food is limited.”
It’s modeled on a Pennsylvania program which provided start-up costs to grocery stores that promised to offer fresh food in low-to-moderate-income areas which didn’t yet have adequate access to such things. Detroit is the sort of city that would benefit most from a boost in urban groceries, Hurst writes.
Photo by paige_eliz via FlickrCarr said the prospect of federal subsidies to increase the number of grocery stores could be a boon to a city where large areas for years have had limited access to fresh produce and meats. In 2003, a University of Michigan study showed Detroit could easily support 41 large supermarkets — which measure more than 40,000 square feet — but at the time had only five with more than 20,000 square feet, and at least two of those have closed since the study was done.
How do these food deserts emerge in the first place? The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Laura Baverman explains by looking into that city’s shrinking grocery selection. Baverman explores several contributing factors, including a lack of the huge lots preferred by big box stores, booming suburbs and struggling independent stores, but in the end she comes back to brutal economic reality:
“You don’t get the sales levels in the inner city that you do out in the suburbs,” said Matt Casey, president of Matthew P. Casey & Associates, a New Jersey-based grocery industry consultant. “You tend to have a lower-income customer base, so they’re not spending as much. They don’t make the impulse buy.”
Related
Coverage of bacon, cell phones doesn’t add up
Zoe Williams, a columnist for the UK’s Guardian, weighs in on coverage of two recent studies, saying that the Daily Mail “takes the role of the Friend Who Exaggerates.”
Williams takes issue with how the paper reported a study about cellular phones and the risk of brain cancer and how it reported on a Harvard study about bacon and heart disease.
She points out that, in the cell phone study, “there were 10 usage groups, ranging from very low to very high. In the very highest group – those reporting using their phone for 12 or more hours a day – there was a raised chance of both glioma and meningioma.” Williams and the study’s author agree that level of use is improbable.
While other papers reported that the study did not find a statistically significant increase in risk, The Daily Mail ran the story with a headline that says “Long conversations on mobile phones can increase risk of cancer, suggests 10-year study.” She also notes that a dose response is missing and that there is no evidence that radio waves – emitted by cell phones – cause cancer.
In the story about bacon and heart disease – which runs with a headline that declares “A bacon sandwich a day raises risk of heart disease by half” – she notes the Daily Mail reports “the risk of heart disease goes up by 42% with every two-ounce (about 56g) serving of processed meat.” Williams calls the 42 percent increase as small in epidemiological terms. The Daily Mail also doesn’t tell readers if that is the absolute risk or the relative risk.
Williams, who calls such stories “thrill-tainment,” concludes that “Health journalism (and it’s not just the Mail) needs more scientific credibility, even to function as entertainment.”
-
Awards for Excellence in Health Care JournalismDeadline: Feb. 3
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
- Focus on freelancing: Tips for buying liability insurance
- Why do some patients get stuck in hospitals for weeks, months?
- Investigate health professionals and the boards that regulate them
- Presidents of AHCJ, SPJ call for more openness from Obama administration
